Fiction

The Scientific Method

1949. I am already six years old and no stranger to adversity when my mother shakes me awake one September morning and tells me we are leaving Los Alamos and moving to Santa. Fe. Instinctively, I sniff her breath for liquor. But there is only the sour musk of coffee and, from her armpits, another…

Neighborhood

SUNDAY The sky was overcast and the weather cold outside. Sylvia called her mother early in the morning before Mass. The mother talked to an older son, David, and later left with the youngest. The two of them took the bus to Pasadena, catching the 92 on Florence and Holmes Aves. in front of the…

All This

She is sickened at all she knows: -about the many ways to make gray with watercolors, creeping up on it from yellow and blue and red with a lot of water or down from black or purple. And brown, brown can edge into gray too somehow. -about corruption in the unions, every union she can…

What Ernest Says

This is what Ernest whispers to her. "You ever had a man to go down on you? How you like me to be going down on you? How you like that? You like Ernest to eat you out? "You ever suck black cock? How you like suckin me off?" When Miss Foote calls on her,…

Algot’s Bird

"Hi babe" Hidalgo always said. Then as always wordlessly we made love. I was brutal just short of ruining the sex. Then we would lie almost dead. "I've got to go!" I cried suddenly, pulling on my clothes, checking to see they were right-side-out, and running home to Algot who was sick. Hidalgo said he…

New Dresses

Mrs. Lovelady, in a morning-fresh white uniform, helped Lisa's mother-in-law, Mrs. Worthy, into the car. Lisa could only stand by and watch. The bucket seat was too low and dangerously tilted for Mrs. Worthy as she was now, and Lisa wished she had listened to David, and had come in his car instead of her…

from Internal War (a novel)

trans. Spanish Gregory Rabassa 18. Jakarta is Here We were living the heroic eve. But I had one worry: the condition of the tanks that on June 29th, the morning of the tanking, when Madman Soupez brought them out to take the Moneda, didn't look so good. The general in charge of the tank formations…

Fatima and Jamila

trans. Portuguese Lisa Sapinkopf "You promised me more stories!" Jamila insisted, seated Buddha-like on the Persian rug, her back turned to Fatima, in the darkest corner of the large living room kept shaded by the windows' thick shutters. The weak light from outside entered only through the open door that gave onto the garden where…

Suddenly One Summer

trans. Portuguese Lisa Sapinkopf That summer we went to the beach at least twice a month. Dad had just bought a bright yellow station-wagon so that we could travel in more comfort, since with my mother, my grandparents, and my little sister Cleonice, there were six of us. Those were happy times. Or at least…